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The world-renowned stature of H. G. Adler and of Raul Hilberg as historians of the Shoah is long established. Their works, written under difficult material conditions and published only after long years of efforts, have indeed become authoritative references, albeit with quite contrasting fates. This paper tells the story of the genesis of these monumental writings, with a particular concern for the second part of Adler’s documentary study, Der verwaltete Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (Administered Man. Studies on the Deportation of the Jews out of Germany), a more than thousand-page volume, never reedited nor translated since its publication in 1974. This return to memory highlights the territorial rootedness of events and individual destinies and gives these authors’ works a presence and humaneness that caution against abusive theoretical abstraction